Another fun event yesterday: the Elf Fantasy Fair in Arcen, The Netherlands. Great location: a castle with elaborate gardens around it. Great weather and lots of fun, happy people. This event covers a very wide range of styles, from goth to medieval to steampunk to furry and everything in between.

Nice find! What lens is that exactly? I've used an old 50mm f1.7 years ago (it used to be my dad's, I've donated it to a friend afterwards) which had kind of a wash-out effect as well. Always wondered whether that's just aging of the glass. A bit of post-processing can easily fix that though (assuming you're shooting digital)

More cyclocross last weekend. This is on a steep (40-45 degrees or so) slope covered in loose, deep, sand. Just standing still on it is an achievement, let alone climbing up with a bike on your back and trying to race others at the same time. Much respect to the riders!

Another race coming up on saturday, if the world doesn't end tomorrow of course.

It's the Mk I 50 f/1.8. They're going on fleabay for a couple hundred but this one isn't in that good of shape, peeling around the focus ring and that sort of thing. People value it a lot over the "nifty fifty" because of the metal mount, but I seriously doubt it has any effect on the light going through it.

I'm really fabulously thrilled with the flash, though. (Spoilered because huge kitty is huger than I expected from a fb photo.)

Spoiler:

If I had the brain to figure out white balance this would be a little less amber (bounce flash but the ceiling isn't white).

What did you bring the book I didn't want read out of up for?"MAN YOUR WAY TO ANAL!" (An actual quote from another forum. Only four small errors from making sense.)

MotorToad wrote:If I had the brain to figure out white balance this would be a little less amber (bounce flash but the ceiling isn't white).

To be honest, I never deal with it. I know I should... If the color balance is way off I just twerk it in the RAW importer.

I've used the nifty fifty on my 350D and 40D and was pleased with the price/quality, but I did upgrade to a Sigma 50mm f1.4 for several reasons (including its larger physical size, the nifty fifty on a 40D with battery grip looks seriously unbalanced...)

Participated in a club ride yesterday morning, and I was sort of drafted in as the photographer for the official stuff at the start of the ride (new club and this was the first proper ride). Won't bore you with the static, posed, group shot, but I liked this view as I came down the stairs to go outside:

I recently upgraded from a Canon 40D to a 7D, mainly for my sports photography but it works out fine for portrait as well I think. Also got a Tamron f2.8 24-70 lens to replace my Canon 17-55 (I found I needed a bit of extra zoom at some times)

Awesome! I would like to recommend trying to take the selfies in such a way (or cropping them afterwards) that your camera isn't visible in a mirror or reflection.

So how do you like that P&S? I'm considering getting one as well to augment the DSLR's I've got. I'll be going on a cycling trip in september and while I have brought a DSLR on previous trips it does add a few pounds to the overall weight I have to haul up some steep hills (in addition to requiring me to wear a backpack on the bike, not the most comfortable thing...). My iPhone takes decent shots but I would like to have something that offers a bit more in terms of photo-settings. Av/Tv would be the minimum...

EvilDuckie wrote:Awesome! I would like to recommend trying to take the selfies in such a way (or cropping them afterwards) that your camera isn't visible in a mirror or reflection.

So how do you like that P&S? I'm considering getting one as well to augment the DSLR's I've got. I'll be going on a cycling trip in september and while I have brought a DSLR on previous trips it does add a few pounds to the overall weight I have to haul up some steep hills (in addition to requiring me to wear a backpack on the bike, not the most comfortable thing...). My iPhone takes decent shots but I would like to have something that offers a bit more in terms of photo-settings. Av/Tv would be the minimum...

Thanks. I'm more bothered by the camera in reflections in my visor, but I'm not going to be bothered with photo editing, I'm just too lazy. The shots with it fully in the mirror I liked as a kind of "how it's made" idea.

I'm shockingly happy with the Tough (I think it's a 620). It focuses better than I have ever seen a P&S and the results are very good. I wouldn't put it pixel-to-pixel against my 5D, but it's more than good enough for fb and fora. And it's compact enough to be a camera I can bring vs. a camera in a bag. I read a lot of reviews on waterproof P&S cameras (which was damn hard to do, to be honest), and Olympus' seemed to have the fewest digital artifacts and better colors. Ordinarily I would have gone straight for a Canon but their waterproof one at the time was way more expensive and only a tiny bit better in ratings.

What did you bring the book I didn't want read out of up for?"MAN YOUR WAY TO ANAL!" (An actual quote from another forum. Only four small errors from making sense.)

Last February I sort of backpacked around central Europe with my girlfriend, and here are some pictures I like the most (disclaimer: I'm a total noob as a photographer, this were taken with my first DSLR, bought during said trip. I was learning to use it as I went along)

Budapest

Spoiler:

Bratislava

Spoiler:

This one is my favorite.

Neuchwanstein

Spoiler:

Brno

Spoiler:

Trenčín

Spoiler:

Prague

Spoiler:

I was completly drunk going back to the hostel at 2AM when I took this one. Prague can be really creepyNow, during the day

So, I recently flew back to the States from the Netherlands and because of some choppy air we got pushed a bit north and ended up flying over the Southern bit of Greenland and got treated to some absolutely incredible views. I didn't see a single road or structure, just mountains, snow, ice, and desolation; it was almost like another world.

I'd really love a slightly more professional-quality camera to complement the higher quality of the new lens, but that's something I'll have to save up for.

Ah, that's the lens I was intending to get earlier this year, but the salesman talked me into the Tamron 24-70 f/2.8. Main reason was the 2.8, as I often do photography in low-light conditions (outdoors, sometimes in the woods, late afternoon in winter) where I prefer not to use a flash. So far it's been serving me well and I don't miss the extra bit of zoom as I have a 70-200 f/4.0 as well.

Jacque wrote:So, I recently flew back to the States from the Netherlands and because of some choppy air we got pushed a bit north and ended up flying over the Southern bit of Greenland and got treated to some absolutely incredible views. I didn't see a single road or structure, just mountains, snow, ice, and desolation; it was almost like another world.

Awesome! It looks like you were flying a bit lower than usual, that certainly adds to the views. Greenland is something I always enjoy seeing from the comfort of a plane.

EvilDuckie wrote:Ah, that's the lens I was intending to get earlier this year, but the salesman talked me into the Tamron 24-70 f/2.8. Main reason was the 2.8, as I often do photography in low-light conditions (outdoors, sometimes in the woods, late afternoon in winter) where I prefer not to use a flash. So far it's been serving me well and I don't miss the extra bit of zoom as I have a 70-200 f/4.0 as well.

Yeah, I wanted something that I could pretty much carry around anywhere and still get excellent shots with. I had a Tamron 18-270mm, but it because of the ridiculous focal range, it really stretches itself thin at the long focal lengths. I've compared the two in photos I've taken and it even struggles at the Canon lens's maximum focal length.

"Did I say recently that I love Giant Speck? Because I love Giant Speck. He is the best." - Weeks

A cyclocross race last week in extremely muddy, and cold, conditions. It had snowed a few days before the race, which then started to melt, turning the course (already known for being a muddy one) and the immediate areas around it into a swamp. Large parts of it were just fluid mud with chunks of ice bobbing around in it.

Thanks! I took 7 (auto-bracketing), but only used 2 in the end - correctly exposed according to the camera for the foreground and snowy mountains, and 2 stops underexposed for the sky and sunset. The valley and the foreground to the right are a bit of a mix of the two. I imported them as layers into photoshop and set up a layer mask so that I could "paint in" the brighter exposure where I wanted it (I got the technique from a youtube video I watched).

Giant Speck wrote:I wish I had the time to figure out how to do stuff like that. I usually just throw myself at the mercy of Lightroom.

I haven't actually gone out and taken photos in a while. Here are a few recent ones:

Great shots, particularly the first one - I like the straight lines coupled with the warm colours.

It doesn't actually take that long to do exposure blending, from deciding "I want to try exposure blending" to having the finished photo probably took me 90 minutes to hike up the hill and take the shots, then 45 minutes to do the post-processing following some instructions I googled. 95% of the post processing was done in Lightroom, it was just the blending that was in Photoshop (although it could be done in GIMP almost as easily). The one unavoidable requirement is that you absolutely need to use a tripod when taking the shots.